The present invention relates to halogen worklights and is more particularly directed to arrangements for including one or more spare halogen bulbs with a worklight.
Halogen worklights have become popular for use in such varied settings as construction jobs, industrial plants, automotive and auto body repair shops, artist and photographic studios, and projects around the home. Halogen bulbs have a comparatively high operating temperature and consequently a limited life, and it is not uncommon for them to burn out while in use on the job. When a bulb fails on the job, it interrupts the project at hand and usually has to be replaced before the work can continue. Thus, it is desirable to have a spare bulb handy.
The typical halogen bulb used in such worklights is a double-ended bulb with a slender elongate envelope having electrical contacts at opposite ends that are shaped for mechanically mounting the bulb in the worklight. U.S. Pat. No. 5,695,278 of Grossman et al. recognized the desirability of storing a spare bulb with the worklight itself. This patent incorporates a spare bulb storage compartment into a tubular handle of the worklight. The handle runs from side to side essentially the width of the worklight head and is conveniently the right size and shape to hold a spare bulb. U.S. Pat. No. 5,845,989 of Leen shows a dedicated elongate tubular housing for a spare halogen bulb that is attached to a worklight at a bracket support for the worklight head. This tubular housing includes a pair of removable end pieces that can be removed to open the housing at either end. The end pieces themselves are formed with longitudinal holes for holding the ends of the halogen bulb. The end pieces frictionally engage the ends of the bulb to hold the bulb securely in the tubular housing. U.S. Pat. No. 6,416,206 of Leen also discloses a tubular housing secured to the same head-supporting bracket. The '206 patent recognizes a problem with the earlier U.S. Pat. No. 5,845,989 in that the end pieces can get dislodged and lost, thus rendering the spare bulb holder unusable. The '206 patent discloses a dedicated tubular housing that employs only a single removable end cap at one end and that is closed at the other end. U.S. Pat. No. 6,050,710 of Grossman et al. shows a worklight in which a dedicated tubular bulb storage container is affixed to or molded into the housing of the worklight head itself on the underside of the head. U.S. Pat. No. 6,450,660 of Lee also discloses the notion of storing a spare bulb in an elongate tubular spare bulb housing and further discloses an arrangement for supporting a double-ended halogen bulb in the elongate tubular housing. In particular, spare bulbs are housed in tubular-shaped support feet forming part of the worklight base. U.S. Pat. No. 6,921,185 of Monroe et al. discloses a storage compartment for holding a single spare bulb that is incorporated into the interior of the frame or bezel on the front of the worklight head and that is accessible when the head is opened up and the frame is separated from the rest of the worklight head.
These prior art approaches have generally sought to store the spare bulb in a piece of tubing that has a free end such as a handle or leg of the worklight or in a piece of dedicated tubing that is attached to the worklight, except for U.S. Pat. No. 6,921,185, which instead stores the spare bulb in a hidden compartment in a specially manufactured front frame.